Sony Classical Announces Guitarist Pablo Sainz-Villegas's The Blue Album Out June 9 - First Single Max Richter's A Catalogue of Afternoons Out Today

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Press contacts: Christina Jensen, Jensen Artists, christina@jensenartists.com

Larissa Slezak, Sony Music Masterworks, larissa.slezak@sonymusic.com 

 

GUITARIST PABLO SAINZ-VILLEGAS RELEASES “THE BLUE ALBUM” 

 

AN INTIMATE ALBUM OF ATMOSPHERIC, MOOD PIECES

BY SCARLATTI, SATIE, DEBUSSY, PHILIP GLASS, MAX RICHTER & MORE

REWORKED FOR THE GUITAR 

OUT JUNE 9 on SONY CLASSICAL 

FIRST SINGLE MAX RICHTER’S “A CATALOGUE OF AFTERNOONS” OUT TODAY

Listen and pre-order here 

“Blue stands for a particularly intimate mood,” says renowned Spanish guitarist Pablo Sainz-Villegas. And correspondingly his next album is titled The Blue Album, which will be released by Sony Classical on June 9, 2023. “Blue symbolizes a mysterious intermediary realm: one thinks of the moment when the sun rises and night slowly withdraws,” Pablo Sainz-Villegas goes on to explain. These are exceptional moments, moments between silence and waking, between heaven and earth, between light and darkness. These are also the moments that spirit us away from the hectic routine of our everyday lives and that create an atmosphere of reverie and relaxation, allowing us time to slow down. All of this is reflected in Pablo Sainz-Villegas’s new programme.

 

Few composers have captured this mood so unmistakably in their music as the French composer Erik Satie, who is represented here by selections from his Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. Debussy’s “Clair de lune” and “La fille aux cheveux de lin” are almost magical in their expressiveness: this is music that is filled with calm and with the power to enchant.

 

According to Pablo Sainz-Villegas, “this album brings together some of the most beautiful and most heartfelt melodies that have ever been written. All these pieces create a magical atmosphere, their colours create a mood, a mystery. The guitar whispers an invitation to the listener to explore and go to the most intimate part of your soul. It creates a moment to look inside and have a conversation with the essence of yourself.”

 

The repertory is correspondingly wide-ranging, extending, as it does, from the German and Italian Baroque – with music by Silvius Leopold Weiss and Domenico Scarlatti – to the present day with music by Philip Glass and Max Richter’s A Catalogue of Afternoons – which, as first single, is out today.  Sainz-Villegas also undertakes a foray into the world of film music with the Cavatina from the classic film The Deer Hunter of 1978. And this release inevitably includes the international hit La Paloma, one of the most frequently performed and arranged pieces of the last 150 years. This Spanish work has come to embody the quintessential notion of longing.

 

The Blue Album will be released digitally and on CD by Sony Classical on June 9.

 

Biographical note

Sainz-Villegas is the "global ambassador of the Spanish guitar" (Billboard Magazine), a star who has brought classical music to millions of people from the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium to a floating stage on the Amazon River or Carnegie Hall in New York. He has been the first guitarist in 38 years to perform at the Philharmonie with the Berlin Philharmonic under Kirill Petrenko. In addition, he has collaborated with artists such as John Williams, Yo-Yo Ma and played for world leaders as the Dalai Lama. Thanks to his charity work Pablo Sainz-Villegas has also been able to bring access to classical music to tens of thousands of children in Spain, Mexico and the United States.

 

Tracklist

1. ERIK SATIE Gymnopédie No. 1

2. FRANÇOIS COUPERIN Les barricades mystérieuses

3. PHILIP GLASS Orphée’s Bedroom

4. LEO BROUWER Canción de cuna (Berceuse)

5. CLAUDE DEBUSSY Clair de lune

6. SYLVIUS LEOPOLD WEISS Passacaille

7. ERIK SATIE Gnossienne No. 1

8. DOMENICO SCARLATTI Keyboard Sonata in D minor

9. FERNANDO SOR Etude in E minor

10. MAX RICHTER A Catalogue of Afternoons

11. CLAUDE DEBUSSY La fille aux cheveux de lin

12. SEBASTIÁN IRADIER La paloma

13. STANLEY MYERS Cavatina

14. RYUICHI SAKAMOTO Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

 

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